The Courier - Chapter One
by GhostRose89
Summary: Ria is on her way to Ceasars fort with her accomplice Boone. She's thinking back over the choices that got her where she is and how she became to be so involved in both the fate of New Vegas and Boone.
1. Chapter 1

I didn't ask for this. That's all I can think over and over as I sit on a raft floating towards a fort that promises death. I didn't ask for this.

I was a courier. Well I wasn't even really that. I delivered one package once a very long time ago when I was only 12 years old. My father was supposed to go but he was sick and I took his place. Not long after I left, my father died. When I returned my mother told me our courier days were over, no more trekking the wasteland contracting god knows what or getting shot at by god knows who. We would get by.

And we did get by, for 6 years I lived out my teenage years with my Mother in relative peace and quiet. But this is California and nothing stays quiet for long and we were lucky to get 6 years of it. Our little town was attacked in the night by Ceasars Legion who were looking to push into New Vegas after their defeat at the dam. My mother and I fled and found refuge in a hut out in the desert, dangerously close to New Vegas. We had no choice, I had to take a courier job once more. I completed two and got us decent money before I took the job that changed everything. I was given a casino chip and remember thinking this job was paying way too much for delivery of a simple chip. We found these things in the desert sometimes, scattered around after the casinos had claimed another schmuck. Why would someone pay so much for this one?

I was passing by Goodsprings in the dead of night when it happened, I was knocked unconscious and dragged to the towns graveyard. When I came to the first thing I realised was that they'd taken the chip. Everything else I owned was still with me, my small gun, my clothes, my money. All they were after was that stupid little chip and now here I knelt, over a roughly dug grave while some suave git pointed a gun at my head. He was talking and I knew he was trying to appear nonchalant like all this was nothing to him but his hand was shaking as he pointed the gun. I huffed. Guess he hadn't bet on an 18 year old girl being the one he had to ambush. Or maybe he never wanted this. Either way he was clearly going to shoot me and if this was the way it was going to end, I'd go out staring into the eyes of my killer. I'd give him no easy way out, he'd have to face this through.

Which he did. Apparently. I don't remember anything except his mouth forming what looked like the word "sorry" as the gun went off. Except that can't have been right because up to that point he'd been spouting off about the game being rigged and kept calling me "baby".

I had woken in a bed with all kinds of medical equipment around me and one hell of a headache. A doctor came over, pulled me upright and told me all about what happened. That a robot had dug me up, that the doc had patched me up and that I was going to be ok. He had a funny look on his face when he finished, and I knew there was too much good news. After some probing, the doc admitted my mother had got to me before the robot had. She'd been halving the courier money to hire a bodyguard to follow me around and check no-one took me out. The bodyguard, it turns out, was one of my charming assassins guys. He'd sent a note back to my mother before my death, informing her he'd been unable to save me. The robot had watched as my mother sobbed over my (seemingly) lifeless body and then placed me gently in my makeshift grave, promising to return and do it properly. It was on her return journey she'd been killed.

My mothers death combined with my near fatal head wound was enough to finish me off the day. I passed out once more and spent the next week in and out of consciousness. When I finally came to properly, the Doc was out. I padded around his house in a haze, all the time thinking about my mother, the bastards that shot me and overwhelming feelings of revenge. By the time the Doc came back I was dressed and had sneaked every bit of ammo out of his house. If he noticed, he didn't say, but told me to talk some of the folk in town before I left, and wished me luck. As I essentially owed him (and this mysterious robot) my life I gave him a quick hug and promised I'd come back one day.

Back to now. I didn't ask for this, and now I probably won't be able to keep my promise to the Doc. And I so wanted to, I wanted to go back to that town and thank him properly and tell him I'd got my revenge and that I was going to be ok. We're still floating towards the fort, Boone and I. He's watching me, like he does nowadays, when he thinks I'm not looking. Watching me with that expression on his face that suggests he's fighting his curiosity and curiosity is winning.


	2. Chapter 2

I met Boone by chance. I had left the Doc and Goodsprings behind me but not before confronting both the robot and the towns problems. They were under constant threat of attack from Powder Gangers and I'd be damned if their town would meet the same fate as mine. Content that they were safe I'd struck up a conversation with my own metal saviour. He'd informed me that someone named House was looking out for me and that I should visit him when I'd found Benny.

Benny, so that was the name of the checker suited man. So far this week I'd been shot in the head, rescued by a robot sent by a mysterious guardian angel named House, helped a town earn their freedom and now I was about to scour the Mojave for a man named Benny. I was told to head to Novac via Nipton, in the hope that the people there would have seen him and his party. It was more than I'd had to go on previously so armed to the teeth with dead Powder Ganger weapons I set off.

The Mojave desert is no easy place to navigate and the conditions are less than hospitable, at any given opportunity a radscorpion or bloatfly will try to take you down. And to add insult to injury, Ceasars Legion had taken over Nipton. I met a hysterically ecstatic man who had won "The Lottery". I'd heard of this lottery, I didn't need his garbled explanation, that he'd got the winning ticket that guaranteed his life and that every other unlucky soul had been slaughtered. Some instantly, if they had got a "decent" ticket. Others slowly and then the last unlucky losers were strung up on crosses in the distance. I felt sick to the stomach, I knew this was the fate that had awaited my town, had we not all fled before they got there. I also knew the people in my town well enough to know they would not have given the Legion the satisfaction of going through their sick lottery. But this man, he had. And he cared not one bit for his dead comrades. It took 5 seconds for me to think all of this through and as he ran off happily away from me I pointed my .44 at him and shot him clean through the skull. He fell to the ground with a thud and I smiled. Served him right.

Whatever they were doing there, the Legion had no qualms with me, in fact my passing was deemed suitable as I could pass on the message to others about Niptons fate. My hand was twitching to deliver the same message I had to the lottery bastard, but I figured there was no way I was going to take on a whole battalion of the Legion. So I simply nodded and held my breath until they became dots in the distance. Then, without looking back I ran until my legs were screaming in protest. I'd had my first encounter with the Legion, and I'd lived. I didn't feel the happiness the lottery winner had, just a sickening rage and fury that they could treat people the way they did. And fear. Let us not forget fear. For despite my anger, I knew what they could do. The bodies on the crosses were a harsh reminder of that.

My next destination was Novac, and it's here I met Boone. I was to question a man named Manny Vargas, but it wasn't him I found in the Dinosaurs mouth guarding the town. It was Boone. He had surveyed me through those cold dead eyes and for a fearful second I was reminded of the Legionnaire I'd just encountered. But this was different. These eyes were dead not because they didn't care but because life had taken everything out of them. He looked defeated, but there was a flicker of something familiar there. Something I recognised, something I felt myself. He questioned me on what I was doing, why was I disturbing him? Then and I don't know how, but he was asking me for help. And then I realised what the thing I recognised was. Revenge. I softened as he told me the story of his wife's disappearance and how he knew she was dead, that she hadn't run away as everyone said and that he knew someone in this town was responsible. He didn't soften towards me, not even when I agreed to dig around for him. He simply turned back to his post and left me staring at the back of his red beret.


End file.
